In
response to these developments, earlier this year the Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO)
Journal was
launched.

RIO’s mission is to open up
the entire research cycle — by publishing project proposals, data, methods,
workflows, software, project reports and research articles. These will all be
made freely available on a single collaborative platform.

And to complete the
picture, RIO uses a transparent, open
and public peer-review process. The goal: to “catalyse change in
research communication by publishing ideas, proposals and outcomes in order to
increase transparency, trust and efficiency of the whole research ecosystem.”

Importantly,
RIO is not intended for scientists
alone. It is seeking content from all areas of academic research, including
science, technology, humanities and the social sciences.

Unsurprisingly
perhaps, the first grant proposal made openly available on RIO (on 17th December) was
published by a physicist — Finnish-born Toma Susi, who is based at the University
of Vienna in Austria.

Susi’s
proposal — which has already received funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) — is for a project called “Heteroatom
quantum corrals and nanoplasmonics in graphene” (HeQuCoG). This
is focused on the controlled manipulation of matter on the scale of atoms.

More
specifically, the aim is to “to create atomically precise structures consisting
of silicon and phosphorus atoms embedded in the lattice of graphene using a
combination of ion implantation, first principles modelling and electron
microscopy.”

The
research has no specific application in mind but, as Susi points out, if “we
are able to control the composition of matter on the atomic scale with such precision,
there are bound to be eventual uses for the technology.”

Below
Susi answers some questions I put to him about his proposal, and his experience
of publishing on RIO.

The interview
begins …

RP: Can you start by saying
what is new and different about the open access journal RIO, and why that is
appealing to you?

TS: Personally, the whole idea
of publishing all stages of the research cycle was something even I had not
considered could or should be done. However, if one thinks about it objectively,
in terms of an optimal way to advance science, it does make perfect sense. At
the same time, as a working scientist, I can see how challenging a change of mind-set
this will be… which makes me want to do what I can to support the effort.

More than 120 cultural and political organisations from around the
world attended and the names of the signatories are openly available here.

Today the Berlin Declaration is held to be one of the keystone events
of the open access movement — offering as it did a
definition of open access, and calling as it did on all researchers to publish
their work in accordance with the open principles outlined in the Declaration.

“In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible
representation of knowledge,” the Declaration added, “the future Web has to be
sustainable, interactive, and transparent.”

The word transparent is surely important here, and indeed the open
access movement (not unsurprisingly) prides itself on openness and
transparency. But as with anything that is precious, there is always the danger
that openness and transparency can give way to secrecy and opaqueness.

By invitation only

There have been annual follow-up conferences to monitor implementation
of the Berlin Declaration since 2003, and these have been held in various parts
of the world — in March 2005, for instance, I attended Berlin 3, which that
year took place in
Southampton (and for which I wrote a report).
The majority of these conferences, however, have been held in Germany, with the
last two seeing a return to Berlin. This year’s event (Berlin
12) was held on December 8th
and 9th at the Seminaris
CampusHotel Berlin.

Of course, open access conferences and gatherings are two a penny today.
But given its historical importance, the annual Berlin conference is viewed as
a significant event in the OA calendar. It was particularly striking,
therefore, that this year (unlike most OA conferences, and so far as I am aware
all previous Berlin conferences) Berlin 12 was “by invitation only”.

Also unlike other open access conferences, there was no live streaming
of Berlin 12, and no press passes were available. And although a Twitter hashtag was
available for the conference, this generated very little in the way of tweets,
with most in any case coming from people who were not actually present at the
conference, including a tweet from a Max Planck
librarian complaining that no MPG librarians had been invited to the
conference.

Why it was decided to make Berlin 12 a closed event is not clear. We do however know who gave presentations as the agenda is online, and this indicates
that there were 14 presentations, 6 of which were given by German presenters (and
4 of these by Max Planck people). This is a surprising ratio given that the
subsequent press release described Berlin
12 as an international conference. There also appears to have been a shortage
of women presenters (see here, here, and here).

But who were the 90 delegates who attended the conference? That we do
not know. When I emailed the organisers to ask for a copy of the delegate list
my question initially fell on deaf ears. After a number of failed attempts, I
contacted the Conference Chair Ulrich Pöschl.

Pöschl replied, “In analogy to most if not all of the many scholarly
conferences and workshops I have attended, we are not planning a public release
of the participants’ list. As usual, the participants of the meeting received a
list of the pre-registered participants’ names and affiliations, and there is
nothing secret about it. However, I see no basis for releasing the conference
participants’ list to non-participants, as we have not asked the participants
if they would agree to distributing or publicly listing their names (which is
not trivial under German data protection laws; e.g., on the web pages of my
institute, I can list my co-workers only if they explicitly agree to it).”

This contrasts, it has to be said, with Berlin 10 (held in South
Africa), where the delegate list was made freely available online, and is still
there. Moreover, the
Berlin 10 delegate list can be sorted by country, by institution and by name.
There is also a wealth of information about the conference on the home page here.

We could add that publishing the delegate list for open access
conferences appears to be pretty standard practice — see here
and here for instance.

However, is Pöschl right to say that there is a specific German problem
when it comes to publishing delegate lists? I don’t know, but I note that the
delegate list for the annual conference
for the Marine Ingredients Organisation (IFFO)
(which was held in Berlin in September) can be downloaded here.

Outcome

Transparency aside, what was the outcome of the Berlin 12 meeting? When
I asked Pöschl he explained, “As specified in the official news
release from the conference, the advice and statements of the participants
will be incorporated in the formulation of an ‘Expression of Interest’ that
outlines the goal of transforming subscription journals to open access
publishing and shall be released in early 2016”.

This points to the fact that the central theme of the conference was the
transformation of subscription journals to Open Access, as outlined in a recent white paper by the Max Planck
Digital Library. Essentially, the proposal is to “flip” all scholarly journals from
a subscription model to an open access one — an approach that some have described
as “magical thinking” and/or impractical (see, for instance, here,
here
and here).

The Expression of Interest will presumably be accompanied by a roadmap outlining how the
proposal can be realised. Who will draft this roadmap and who will decide what
it contains is not entirely clear. The conference press release says, “The key
to this lies in the hands of the scientific institutions and their sponsors”,
and as Pöschl told me, the advice and comments of delegates to Berlin 12 will
be taken into account in producing the Expression of Interest. If that is right, should we not know exactly
who the 90 delegates attending the conference were?

All in all, we must wonder why there was a need for all the secrecy that
appears to have surrounded Berlin 12. And given this secrecy, perhaps we should
be concerned that there is a danger the open access movement could become some kind
of secret society in which a small self-selected group of unknown people make
decisions and proposals intended to impact the entire global scholarly
communication system?

Either way, what happened to the openness and transparency inherent in the
Berlin Declaration?

In the spirit of that transparency I invite all those who attended the
Berlin 12 to attach their name below (using the comment functionality), and if
they feel so inspired to share their thoughts on whether they feel that open
access conferences ought to be held in camera in the way Berlin 12 appears to have been.

Or is it wrong and/or naïve to think that open access implies openness
and transparency in the decision making and processes involved in making open access a reality, as well as of research outputs?

An important moment for Grossmann came in 2008, when Springer acquired the
open-access publisher BioMed Central
from serial entrepreneur Vitek
Tracz. Listening to a presentation on the purchase given at a management
meeting by the company’s CEO Derk Haank, Grossmann
immediately saw the logic of the move, and the imperatives of open access.

However, it was soon apparent to him that the publishing industry at
large is not in a hurry to reinvent itself for an OA world, and certainly not if
it means having to take hard decisions that could threaten the high profit
levels that it has become accustomed to earning from journal publishing.

Speaking
to me two years ago Grossmann put it this way: “[T]here is no publishing
house which is either able or willing to consider the rigorous change in their
business models which would be required to actively pursue an open access
publishing concept.”

And this remains his view today.

In 2013, therefore, Grossmann partnered with Boston-based entrepreneur
and software developer Tibor
Tscheke to found a for-profit OA venture called ScienceOpen. At the same
time he took a post as professor of publishing management at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Vitek Tracz is a hero of the open access
movement, and it is not hard to see why. Fifteen years ago he founded the
world’s first for-profit OA publisher BioMed Central (BMC), and pioneered pay-to-publish gold OA. Instead of charging readers a downstream
subscription fee, BMC levies an upfront article-processing charge, or APC. By doing so it is able to cover its costs at the
time of publication, and so make the papers it publishes freely available on
the Internet.[See the comment below the Q&A for clarification of this].

Many said Tracz’s
approach would not work. But despite initial scepticism BMC eventually
convinced other publishers that it had a sustainable business model, and so
encouraged them to put their toes in the OA waters too. As such, OA advocates
believe BMC was vital to the success of open access. As Peter Murray-Rustput it in 2010, “Without Vitek and BMC we would not have
open access”.

Today
Tracz has a new, more radical, mission, which he is pursuing with F1000.

Vitek Tracz

As always, I
have written an introduction to the Q&A below with Vitek Tracz; as
sometimes happens, the introduction turned out to be longer than readers might
expect, or wish to read.

I have,
therefore, put the introduction into a PDF file, which can be accessed by clicking
on this link.

Those interested
only in the Q&A need simply read on below.

The Q&A begins ….

RP: As I
understand it, F1000 now consists of three main services — F1000Research,
F1000Prime, and F1000Workspace. In addition, I believe there is something
called F1000 Specialists. Can you say something briefly about each of these
services, and when they were launched?

VT:The newly launched F1000(F1000.com) is an
integrated site combining three services: F1000Prime, F1000Research and F1000Workspace.
These services are built and supported through the active collaboration and
participation of the largest high-level group of experts (over 11,000 and
growing) from across biology and medicine, the F1000 Faculty. This consists of
experienced leaders (Faculty Members) and talented young researchers (Associate
Faculty Members, appointed by Faculty Members), in about equal numbers.

We
started what is now called F1000Prime 13 years ago, which has become the
largest and most comprehensive article-level quality assessment of biomedical
literature: the F1000 Faculty identify those articles
they find interesting in their daily work, rate them at one of the three levels
of quality (all positive, the goal is to find the best articles) and write a
short text explaining why the chosen article is interesting to them.

F1000Research,
launched over 2 years ago, is an open science publishing platform that offers a
completely new way of publishing research in biology and medicine: it uses
immediate publication followed by transparent peer review, requires the
underlying data to be shared, and encourages the publication of all research
findings. It also now offers a platform to freely share scientific posters and
slides.

Recently,
we launched F1000Workspace, a comprehensive set of tools to help researchers
write articles and grants, discover literature, manage references and reference
libraries, and collaborate and prepare for publication.

The
F1000 Specialists are not an external service; they are a growing group of
young active supporters of our services who work with us in key institutions to
support new users of our services and bring feedback that then contributes to
future development decisions.

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

What many now refer to as predatory publishing first came to my attention
7 years ago, when I interviewed a publisher who — I had been told — was bombarding
researchers with invitations to submit papers to, and sit on the editorial boards
of, the hundreds of new OA journals it was launching.

Since then I have undertaken a number of other such interviews, and with each
interview the allegations have tended to become more worrying — e.g. that the publisher
is levying article-processing charges but not actually sending papers out for review,
that it is publishing junk science, that it is claiming to be a member of a publishing
organisation when in reality it is not a member, that it is deliberately choosing
journal titles that are the same, or very similar, to those of prestigious
journals (or even directly cloning titles) in order to fool researchers into
submitting papers to it etc. etc.

As the allegations became more serious I found myself repeatedly
telling OA advocates that unless something was done to address the situation the
movement would be confronted with a serious problem. But far too little has
been done, and so the number of predatory publishers has continued to grow, and
the cries of alarm are becoming more widespread.

Initially, the OA movement responded by saying that it was not a real problem
because most so-called predatory journals had few if any papers in them, so there
could be very few researchers affected.

Nevertheless, the number of publishers listed by Jeffrey Beall as “potential,
possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers” has grown year
by year. Since 2011 Beall’s list has increased from
just 18 publishers to 693. One has to ask: why would there have been a 3,750%
increase in this number if only a handful of people ever use the journals?

When it became harder to sweep the problem aside, OA advocates shifted ground,
and began to argue that while there may be an issue it was only a problem for
researchers in the developing world.

But is that response not simply another way of trying to suggest that there
isn’t really a problem? Either way, why would the problem be any less important
if the only victims were researchers based in the developing world?

In any case, I do not believe it to be an accurate characterisation. When
a recent ABC Background
Briefing examined the activities of one suspect publisher’s operations in
Australia it concluded that there was a real problem down under. And Australia can
hardly be described as a developing country.

Call me a sceptic

My own personal experience likewise suggests that the problem is somewhat
more widespread and worrying than is generally acknowledged. I am regularly
contacted by researchers who have fallen foul of dubious OA publishers. Yes,
some of these researchers are based in the developing world, but a good number
are based in the developed world, and some are even based in prestigious North
American universities.

So call me a sceptic over claims that predatory publishing is not a serious issue, or that
it is only impacting on those based in the developing world.

I’d also have to say that when I contact universities where those
who have asked me for help are based, or big publishers whose journal titles have
been used as bait to gull researchers into submitting to a predatory journal, I
don’t get the feeling that there is much willingness to help the victims, to tackle
the problem, or even to confront it.

For their part, OA advocates often also resort to arguing that subscription
publishers are also predatory, so why does not Beall include them in his list
as well? While this may be true, it is not particularly helpful, or relevant, in
the context of seeking a solution to the problem of predatory OA journals.

So we are left with a growing problem but little effort being put into
resolving it.

What we do have is a white list run by the Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ), and a blacklist run by a single
individual (Jeffrey Beall).

One problem with the white list approach is that it can too easily become
an exclusive club (excluding, say, journals based in the developing world). Moreover,
the management of DOAJ has not been trouble free. Last year, for instance, it had
to remove
over 650 journals from its database after it decided it needed to tighten
up its selection criteria and ask publishers to re-apply for inclusion.
This was necessary because it had become clear that predatory journals were
finding their way into the database. But as predatory
journal buster John Bohannon has pointed
out, the real problem is that DOAJ doesn’t have sufficient resources to be very effective. DOAJ is, he says, “fighting an uphill battle to identify all of literature’s
‘fake journals’.”

As a lone individual, the challenge for Beall is that much greater. It
is no surprise therefore that he and his blacklist are frequently (and often bitterly)
criticised for including publishers without sufficient evidence that they are indeed
predatory. In any case, add OA advocates, Beall is “anti-OA”, and so his list should
be completely ignored. Of course, it is always much easier to criticise someone
who is trying to solve a problem than to do something about it yourself.

So what is the solution? Personally, I think the problem needs to be
approached from a different direction.

What is surely relevant here is that in order to practise their trade predatory
publishers depend on the co-operation of researchers, not least because they
have to persuade a sufficient number to sit on their editorial boards in order to
have any credibility. Without an editorial board a journal will struggle to
attract many submissions.

This suggests that if a journal is predatory then all those researchers
sitting on its editorial and advisory boards are to some extent also predatory,
or at least they are conspiring in the publisher’s predatory behaviour. After
all, if members of the editorial board of a journal that was engaging in predatory
activity wanted to end or curtail that activity they could join together and resign,
or threaten to resign.

Yes, I know some researchers have their names listed on journal
editorial boards without their permission, or perhaps even knowledge. But the
majority do so because it looks good on their CV. And in accepting an
invitation to be associated with a journal most ask far too few questions about
the publisher, and do far too little research into its activities, before saying
yes. ABC found over
200 Australian researchers sitting on the editorial boards of just one predatory
publisher. I am confident that most if not all of these agreed to sit on the
boards.

So my question is this: Do these researchers not have some
responsibility for any predatory behaviour the publisher engages in?
Personally, I think the answer is yes!

What to do?

So what to do? Here I have a modest proposal. I don’t know whether it
is practical or feasible, but I make the proposal anyway, if only to try and
get people to think more seriously about solutions rather than excuses.

Why does the OA movement not create a database containing all the names
of researchers who sit on the editorial and/or advisory boards of the publishers
on Beall’s list, along with the names of the journals with which they are
associated? Such a database could perhaps serve a number of purposes:

·It could be used as a way of cross checking the appropriateness
of a publisher/journal being listed on Beall’s site. It would at least surely focus minds,
and hopefully encourage editorial boards to demonstrate (if they can) that
their publisher/journal has been inappropriately placed on Beall’s list, or do something
about it, if only by resigning. To help trigger this process researchers listed
in the database could be contacted and told that their name was in it.

·The database could help those thinking of
submitting to a journal listed in it to more easily find and contact members of its
editorial board, and before submitting ask them to personally vouch for the
quality of the review process. If things then went wrong the submitting researcher
could take the issue up with those board members s/he had contacted. There is
nothing quite like personal recommendation, and the personal responsibility
that accompanies it.

·Researchers could also search on the database
before agreeing to sit on an editorial board as part of a due diligence
process. If the publisher/journal is listed in the database they could contact board
members and ask them to personally vouch for the quality of the journal.

·Researchers could search the database for their
own names in order to establish whether they have been listed on an editorial
board without their permission or knowledge.

·Such a database could also quickly reveal how
many journals on Beall’s list a particular researcher was associated with.

·If editorial board members’ institutions were
included in the database regular Top 10 lists could be published showing the
institutions that had the greatest number of board members of journals in Beall’s
list. Would that not also focus minds?

·And if countries were included Top 10 lists of
those could be published too.

I am sure people would also come up with other uses for such a database.

As I say, I don’t know how practical my proposal is, or whether anyone would
be willing to take it on — but it is worth noting that ABC has already produced
a list of board members of the journals of one publisher (although without
the name of the relevant journal attached). This suggests that it is feasible. In
fact, creating such a database would be a great candidate for a crowdsourcing
project.

Above all, such an initiative would make an important point: responsibility
for predatory behaviour needs to be pushed back to the research community.

As Cameron Neylon points
out, we need to move beyond the point of seeing researchers as “hapless
victims”. They are active agents in
scholarly communication, and when the publishing practices of journals with
which they are associated turn out to be inadequate or deceptive researchers ought
to take responsibility, not just point the finger at rogue publishers.

In any case, it is surely past time for the research community to step
up and grasp this nettle.

On a more general note, creating public databases of researchers on the
editorial and advisory boards of journals (both those considered predatory and
those not considered so) would make the point that agreeing to be associated
with a journal comes with responsibilities, that it is not just a way of
padding a CV.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Earlier this week I received an unsolicited email message
from a company called Cyagen Biosciences
inviting me to cite its “animal model services” in my scientific publications. By
doing so, I was told, I could earn a financial reward of $100 or more. And since
the amount would be based on the Impact Factor (IF) of the journal in
question, the figure could be as high as $3,000 — were I, for instance, to cite
Cyagen in Science (IF of 30).

Austin Jelcick

The email surprised me for a number of reasons, not least because
I am a journalist/blogger not a scientist. As such, I have never published a research
paper in my life, and have no plans to do so. Moreover, I have only the vaguest
idea of what an “animal model service” is, let alone how I would cite a company
selling such a service in a scientific paper.

Curious as to why I had received such a message I searched on the
Web for the company’s name, only to find that the link from Google to Cyagen’s
home page delivered an error message.

Eventually locating an email address I contacted the company and
asked if it could confirm that the message that I received had been sent on its
behalf (It appeared to have come from a direct marketing company called Vertical Response).

The next day I received a reply from Cyagen product manager Austin Jelcick, who explained
that I had received the message “as part of our marketing campaign which is
currently seeking to raise awareness within the scientific community for our
citation rewards program.”

As I was associated with “several blogs and articles related to
open access journals and publishing” he added, it was assumed I would be
interested in “our newly launched campaign to actively reward scientists for
citing us in their materials and methods section while simultaneously
encouraging them to submit into higher impact journals for increased awareness
of both their study and our services offered.”

He added: “we felt that it would be beneficial to the researcher
to receive a sort of ‘store credit’ for doing something they already must do as
part of the publication process.”

Now intrigued, I invited Jelcick to do an email Q&A so that
he could explain in more detail who the company was and why it had launched this
campaign.

Very surprised by the offer

While I was swapping questions and answers with Jelcick by email
the company’s campaign was starting to attract a good deal of commentary on the
Web.

Yesterday, for instance, high profile physician and science
writer Ben Goldacre published
a blog
post entitled, “So this company Cyagen is paying authors for citations in
academic papers”.

Goldacre concluded, “Perhaps my gut reaction — that this feels
dubious — is too puritanical. But I am certainly very surprised by the offer.”

Goldacre’s intervention also sparked a post
over on Retraction Watch entitled, “Researchers,
need $100? Just mention Cyagen in your paper!”

By now there was also a steady stream of comments from scientists
on Twitter, expressing everything from puzzlement to outrage — see this
for instance.

By late yesterday Cyagen clearly felt the need to make a public
statement, which it did by means of a
Q&A on Facebook, explaining: “Please find below some of the questions
which were asked of us and our response which should help clear up the
misunderstanding which has occurred about this promotion.”

The post went on to list seven questions and answers. What the
company did not explain, however, is that these had been extracted from the interview
I was still in the process of doing with Jelcick. That is, Cyagen did not cite
me!

What has become clear is that the company believes that its email
invitation has been misunderstood. Linking to the Facebook post from a comment
on Goldacre’s blog, Jelcick went so far as to complain that Cyagen has become a
victim of “some gross miscommunication”.

Richard Van Noorden appears to agree, saying on
Twitter that the story has been “gleefully badly reported”. He explained: “you
can’t get $100 by citing them. You get a discount voucher for their products”. He
nevertheless suggests
that Cyagen should withdraw the offer “pronto”.

It would seem that the mistake Cyagen made was to link its
promotion to the much-maligned Impact Factor, which has become a red rag to
many scientists. (See also the first comment below).

Anyway, below is the full list of 17 questions and answers that
make up the interview I did with Jelcick. Some of the answers are a little repetitive,
but given the confusion surrounding Cyagen’s email I have chosen not to edit
them.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Earlier this
year University of California Press (UC Press) launched a new open access mega journal called Collabra. Initially focusing on three
broad disciplinary areas (life and biomedical sciences, ecology and
environmental science, and social and behavioural sciences), the journal will
expand into other disciplines at a later date.

One of the
distinctive features of Collabra is that its authors can choose to have the peer review reports signed by the reviewers and published alongside their papers, making them freely available for all to
read — a process usually referred to as open peer review.

This contrasts
with the traditional approach, where generally the reviewers’ names are not
disclosed to the authors, the authors’ names are not disclosed to the reviewers, and the reviewers’ reports are not made public (commonly referred to as “double-blind”
peer review).

Since Collabra is offering open peer review on a voluntary basis it remains unclear how many papers will be
published in this way, but the signs are encouraging: the authors of the first
paper published by Collabra opted for open peer review, as have the majority of
authors whose papers are currently being processed by the publisher. Moreover,
no one has yet refused to be involved because open peer review is an option, and
no one has expressed a concern about it.

So how does open
peer review work in practice and what issues does it raise? To find out I emailed some questions to UC Press Director Alison Mudditt, whose answers are published
below.

Alison Mudditt

RP:
Presumably both the author and all the reviewers have to agree to open peer
review before Collabra can publish the reviews? What percentage of the papers
it publishes does Collabra expect will have the reviews published alongside?

AM: Authors
choose open peer review as an option upon submission, so it is always their
decision and as such they have already agreed in advance. Reviewers are made
aware that authors have chosen this option and could opt to decline the review
if they are unwilling to have their review comments made publicly available.

As a secondary option, whether or not open review has been chosen
by the author, reviewers can sign their reviews. So it is possible to have
reviewer comments be open, but the identity of the reviewer remain anonymous.
Or, for that matter, have closed review, but reviewers sign their reviews. This
is all described here.

With only one published article it is hard to project what the
percentage will be, but at this point the majority of authors—for the papers
currently being processed in our system—have opted for open review.

We are not targeting certain percentages, but rather want to put
new options in front of people, especially given the numerous critiques of
traditional closed peer review systems. This will not be for everyone, but we
believe there’s much to be learned from experimentation with new models.

RP: Will
Collabra make any effort to seek out reviewers who are comfortable with open
peer review?

AM: The
academic editors are selecting reviewers, and their top consideration will of
course be the reviewer’s expertise for any given paper.

We make all the options and elements of Collabra clear when
inviting external editors to be involved. Some editors are particularly
interested in the open review option, and other editors have not commented on
it.

No one has refused to be involved because it is an option or
expressed a concern about this option.

RP: I
assume that not all the correspondence is shared when Collabra publishes the
reviews, and perhaps they might be edited in some way first (at least
sometimes)? If so, what considerations/editorial rules are applied before
making reviews public?

AM: Currently,
the “open review file” is constituted by the reviewers’ comments on the
reviewer form, the editor’s comments to the author based on the reviewers’
comments, and the author’s response—all as captured in our editorial system.

It is clear on the review form that there is an area for
confidential comments to the editor that would not be shown to the author nor
included in the openly available comments. But, for the remainder of the form,
it is made clear that comments may be seen by the author and used without
editing.

What is not currently shown is any earlier version of the
paper and any comments or tracked changes on that. We will continue to monitor
this policy and will consider other options, if it seems that useful or
important elements are being omitted by not including earlier versions/changes.

And, obviously, if any discussion occurs outside of the editorial
system between a reviewer and an editor, that will not be captured.

As regards editorial rules and considerations for any edits or
omissions, we would discuss that with the editors as they came up. It is hard
to say in advance what that might be (other than any information which is
confidential and not even being revealed in the paper), so we’ll deal with that
on a case by case basis.

Naturally, we would opt to be transparent about this happening
should it occur beyond normal confidentiality considerations. For now we will
see how it goes with it’s being clear on the form that comments may be used as
written.

RP:
Having started down this road (and so given concentrated thought to the
matter), what would Collabra say were the pros and cons of open peer review?

AM: Speaking
on behalf of UC Press (I’m not sure it’s appropriate to speak as “Collabra” in
this context), we think that the inner workings of the peer review process are,
purely and simply, interesting for any reader, but in particular for people who
would like to see more transparency in this process.

There is clearly an argument to be made that making things open
(rather than, for example, the double blind process) will help to reduce
biases, problematic opinions, or hierarchical sensitivities that can affect the
review process.

Equally importantly, open review starts to demonstrate the value
added by the review process and to recognize the contributions of reviewers to
scholarship

Finally, we all know that traditional peer review has not put a
stop to whole disciplines being rocked by scandals of fabricated data and
unquestioned results, and it’s possible that open peer review will actually
help to improve the scholarly record.

On a related note, one of our other aims with Collabra is to get
rid of the phrase “peer review lite” which has plagued the type of review that
Collabra (and other OA titles) employs.

We characterize our review criterion as being “selective for
credibility only”—checking for the scientific, methodological, and ethical
rigor of a paper, and removing, as much as humanly possible, more subjective
reviewing criteria for novelty or anticipated impact. Open reviews will support
this mission—to show that there is nothing “lite” about this kind of review
(and in fact, sometimes quite the opposite).

It’s too early for us to be able to identify specific problems
with open peer review for Collabra, although we are aware of studies suggesting
that it may be harder to get reviewers and it may lengthen the review time. Our
limited experience so far does not support either of these concerns.

The other cons of open peer (as opposed to double blind) review
are clearly to do with concerns about bias, the highly variable nature of peer
review, and the additional costs it could impose on an already overtaxed
system.

For example, a reviewer might be worried about openly and
critically reviewing a more senior author and believe there could be a negative
effect on her own career.

Our hope is that a more open system will improve the integrity of
the peer review process, but the reality is that any system will be subject to
the biases of human nature—we just think that this is more likely to be
surfaced through greater transparency.

RP: Does
Collabra think that there are occasions when open peer review is inappropriate?
If so, when and why?

AM: Anything
raised in peer review of a confidential nature which does not make it into the
published article should be carefully removed from any open peer review
comments that get published during open review.

That said, we (UC Press) are not really the drivers of how open
peer review will evolve in Collabra or elsewhere. Since Collabra works only
with external editors, editorial policies should emerge that are firmly based
on the standards of each research community that publishes in Collabra.

If a community-driven majority standard emerged which stated that,
in certain situations, open peer review was inappropriate, then we would
respect such a decision.

RP: Are
there any other learning points that have emerged as Collabra has sought to
implement open peer review?

AM: It’s too
early in the launch of Collabra to really be able to comment, although we have
been pleasantly surprised at authors’ and reviewers’ willingness to consider
the option of open peer review. That seems to be a great start for this concept.

Initially this criticism was directed at
RCUK’s stated preference for gold OA, which universities feared would have
significant cost implications for them. In response, RCUK offered to provide additional funding to pay for gold OA, and agreed that green OA can be used instead of
gold (although RCUK continues to stress that it “prefers” gold).

At the same time, however, the funder doubled
the permissible embargo period for green OA to 12 months for STM journals and
24 months for HSS journals. This sparked a second round of criticism, with OA advocates complaining that RCUK had succumbed to publisher lobbying. The
lengthened embargoes, they argued, would encourage those publishers without an
embargo to introduce one, and those who already had an embargo to lengthen it.

There was logic in the criticism, since
one rational response to the adjusted RCUK policy that profit-hungry publishers
would be likely to make would be to seek to dissuade authors from embracing
green OA (by imposing a long embargo before papers could be made freely
available), while encouraging them to pick up the money RCUK had put on the
table and pay to publish their papers gold OA instead (which would provide
publishers with additional revenues).

It was therefore no great
surprise when, in April 2013, Emerald Group Publishing — which until then had not had a green embargo
— introduced one. Nor was it a surprise that it settled on the maximum
permitted period allowed by RCUK of 24 months.

It was likewise no surprise
that Emerald’s move also attracted criticism, not just from OA advocates but (in May of that year) from members of the House of Commons
Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Committee, which was at the time
conducting an inquiry into
open access.

When taking evidence from the then
Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts, for instance,
the MP for Northampton South Brian
Binley said “We have received recent
reports of a major British publisher revising its open access policy to require
embargoes of 24 months, where previously it had required immediate unembargoed
deposit in a repository.” Binley went on to ask if Willetts could therefore please
have someone contact the publisher and investigate the matter.

At the time I also contacted Emerald. I wanted to
know the precise details of its new policy and to establish who would be impacted
by it. This proved a little difficult, but it turned out that Emerald had introduced a “deposit
without embargo if you wish, but not if you must” policy — an approach pioneered by
Elsevier in 2011, but which it recently abandoned.

While the wording of the
Emerald policy may have changed a little since it was introduced, at the time of
writing it appeared to be the same in substance: authors are told that they can
post the pre-print or post-print version of any article they have submitted to
an Emerald journal onto their personal website or institutional repository “with
no payment or embargo period” — unless
the author is subject to an OA mandate, in which case a 24 month embargo
applies.

Monday, June 22, 2015

At
the 2001 meeting that launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) the newly-fledged OA
movement outlined two strategies for making the scholarly literature freely
available. Later dubbed green OA and gold OA, these are now
the two primary means of providing open access, and both types have been mandated by
research funders in the UK. For instance, in 2013 Research Councils UK (RCUK) introduced an OA policy that favours
gold open access, and in 2014 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) announced what is
essentially a green OA policy, which will come into force next year. So how does the future for open
access look?

Just to remind ourselves: With gold OA,
researchers publish their papers in an open access journal and the publisher
makes them freely available on the Internet as a natural part of the
publication process. With green, OA researchers continue to publish in
subscription journals, but then self-archive a version of their work in an open
repository, either a central repository like PubMed Central, or an institutional
repository. Meanwhile, the official version of the paper (version of record)
remains behind a subscription paywall on the publisher’s site.

BOAI did not specify that OA journals
should levy an article-processing charge (APC), but while OA advocates point
out that most OA journals do not
charge a fee, the reality (unless something changes) is that the
pay-to-play model is set to dominate OA publishing.

Importantly, this means that although
BOAI attendees assumed OA publishing would be less costly than traditional subscription
method, use of the APC will make scholarly publishing more expensive, certainly
during the transition to open access (which could last indefinitely).

And to the chagrin of OA advocates, much
of the revenue generated by APCs is currently being sucked up by traditional
publishers like Elsevier and Wiley, especially through the use of hybrid OA.

In reviewing the figures for 2013-2014,
for instance, Wellcome’s Robert Kiley reported
that Elsevier and Wiley “represent some 40% of our total APC spend, and are
responsible for 35% of all Trust-funded papers published under the APC model.”
(74% of the papers concerned were published as hybrid OA).

The story is similar at RCUK. As the Times Highernoted
in April: “Publishers Elsevier and Wiley have each received about £2 million in
article processing charges from 55 institutions as a result of RCUK’s open
access policy.” In total RCUK paid out £10m, which is in addition to the subscription
fees universities are already paying.

In effect, it would seem, traditional
publishers are in the process of appropriating gold OA, and doing so in a way that
will not only ensure they maintain their current profit levels, but that will
likely increase them. And the profits of scholarly publishers, OA advocates argue,
are already obscenely
high.

Almost OA

But green OA advocates maintain that this
is not inevitable, and have long argued that if implemented wisely, and
strategically, open access can squeeze out the excessive costs of scholarly
publishing, and so reduce publisher profits. However, they insist, this will only
happen if researchers self-archive their subscription papers rather than opt
for pay-to-publish. If researchers do this, they say, publishers will have to
compete with repositories for access provision, and so will be compelled
to downsize their operations. This in turn will put downward pressure on
costs (and thus any publishing fees). Only at the point where these costs have
fallen, argue green OA advocates, should researchers consider paying to
publish.